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The U.S. Department of Energy
Computer Incident Advisory Capability
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INFORMATION BULLETIN
HP-UX Remote Watch
February 6, 1995 1200 PST Number F-10
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PROBLEM: Security vulnerabilities in HP-UX Remote Watch can be used to
increase access privileges of users.
PLATFORMS: HP 9000 series 300/400s and 700/800s, for HP-UX versions 8.x
and 9.x
DAMAGE: User can increase their access privileges.
SOLUTION: Apply appropriate vendor patch as described below.
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VULNERABILITY The security vulnerability in HP-UX Remote Watch can be used
ASSESSMENT: used to increase a user's access privileges which may result
in system compromise. CIAC urges affected sites to install
install the appropriate secuirty patch as soon as possilbe.
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Critical Information about HP-UX Remote Watch
CIAC has obtained information from Hewlett Packard regarding a new security
vulnerability in Remote Watch contained in the WATCH-RUN fileset for
releases of HP-UX. Appendix I provides detailed patch information for the
HP Remote Watch vulnerability.
The document /pub/ciac/bulletin/f-fy95/hppatchs.txt has been updated to
reflect this bulletin. The hppatchs.txt document contains the entire list
of all HP Bulletins and patches and is available on our FTP server
ciac.llnl.gov.
HP has an automatic server to allow patches and other security information
to be retrieved over the Internet. To utilize this server, send an e-mail
message to support@support.mayfield.hp.com. The subject line of the message
is ignored and the body (text) of the message should contain the words
send XXXX
where XXXX is the identifier for the information you want retrieved. For
example, to retrieve the patch PHSS_4834, the message would be "send
PHSS_4834".
Other information that can be retrieved include the HP SupportLine mail
service user's guide (send guide.txt), the readme file for a patch and the
original HP bulletin (send doc HPSBUX9501-020).
HP also has a World Wide Web server to browse and retrieve bulletins and
patches. To utilize this server, use a WWW client and connect to
http://support.mayfield.hp.com.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Hewlett Packard updates patches periodically. These updates
are not reflected in the text of each HP bulletin. The overview presented
here contains current information on the patches available at the time of
the release of this CIAC bulletin. If you request an updated patch, when
you try to retrieve the patch you will receive a message stating that the
patch is obsolete and the name of the patch which supersedes it.
Hewlett Packard has made sum and MD5 checksums available for their patches
and for their security bulletins. See the detailed explanation for
HPSBUX9408-016 in CIAC bulletin F-02 for information on how to access and
utilize these checksums.
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CIAC wishes to thank Hewlett Packard for the information contained in this
bulletin.
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CIAC is the computer security incident response team for the U.S.
Department of Energy. Services are available free of charge to DOE and DOE
contractors.
DOE and DOE contractor sites can contact CIAC at:
Voice: 510-422-8193
FAX: 510-423-8002
STU-III: 510-423-2604
E-mail: ciac@llnl.gov
Previous CIAC notices, anti-virus software, and other information are
available on the Internet via anonymous FTP from ciac.llnl.gov (IP address
128.115.19.53).
CIAC has several self-subscribing mailing lists for electronic publications:
1. CIAC-BULLETIN for Advisories, highest priority - time critical
information, and Bulletins, important computer security information;
2. CIAC-NOTES for Notes, a collection of computer security articles;
3. SPI-ANNOUNCE for official news about Security Profile Inspector (SPI)
software updates, new features, distribution and availability;
4. SPI-NOTES, for discussion of problems and solutions regarding the use of
SPI products.
Our mailing lists are managed by a public domain software package called
ListProcessor, which ignores E-mail header subject lines. To subscribe (add
yourself) to one of our mailing lists, send requests of the following form:
subscribe list-name LastName, FirstName PhoneNumber
as the E-mail message body, substituting CIAC-BULLETIN, CIAC-NOTES,
SPI-ANNOUNCE or SPI-NOTES for "list-name" and valid information for
"LastName" "FirstName" and "PhoneNumber." Send to: ciac-listproc@llnl.gov
not to: ciac@llnl.gov
e.g.,
subscribe ciac-notes O'Hara, Scarlett 404-555-1212 x36
subscribe ciac-bulletin O'Hara, Scarlett 404-555-1212 x36
You will receive an acknowledgment containing address and initial PIN, and
information on how to change either of them, cancel your subscription, or get
help.
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PLEASE NOTE: Many users outside of the DOE and ESnet computing communities
receive CIAC bulletins. If you are not part of these communities, please
contact your agency's response team to report incidents. Your agency's team
will coordinate with CIAC. The Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams
(FIRST) is a world-wide organization. A list of FIRST member organizations
and their constituencies can be obtained by sending E-mail to
first-request@first.org with an empty subject line and a message body
containing the line: send first-contacts.
This document was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of
the United States Government. Neither the United States Government nor the
University of California nor any of their employees, makes any warranty,
expressed or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for
the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, product, or
process disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe privately
owned rights. Reference herein to any specific commercial products, process,
or service by trade name, trademark manufacturer, or otherwise, does not
necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring
by the United States Government or the University of California. The views
and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect
those of the United States Government nor the University of California, and
shall not be used for advertising or product endorsement purposes.
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Appendix I: Details of HP-UX Remote Watch Bulletin
HPSBUX9510-020: HP-UX Remote Watch dated January 31, 1995
This vulnerability can allow users to increase their access privileges which
may result in system compromise. All HP 300/400 and 700/800 series machines
running HP-UX 8.x or 9.x which have Remote Watch installed are affected.
The patch to install depends on which operating system version and machine
series you are currently using. Use the following table to determine which
patch to retrieve and install:
Operating System Series Apply patch
HP-UX 8.x 800 PHSS_5185
HP-UX 9.x 800 PHSS_5136
HP-UX 8.x 700 PHSS_5180
HP-UX 9.x 700 PHSS_5107
HP-UX 8.x 300/400 PHSS_5168
HP-UX 9.x 300/400 PHSS_5120
Obtain necessary patches, and install per the installation instructions
included with the patches.
After the patch is installed, be sure to examine /tmp/update.log for any
relevant WARNINGs or ERRORs. This can be done by typing "tail -60
/tmp/update.log | more", then paging through the screens via the space bar,
looking for WARNING or ERROR messages.